From Our Lives, Controlled From Some Guy’s Couch – New York Times
“My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that,†he says, “is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.â€
Mainland auctions
Now we know why Linden Lab raised the minimum bid on mainland sims: They have actually succeeded in flooding the market enough to bring winning bids on mainland sims below the price of private sims. It hasn’t descended to the minimum yet, and some sims are going for more than the purchase price of a private sim. But if you just want a whole sim to play around in (assuming you don’t want to do heavy terraforming), it looks like buying a mainland sim at auction is probably the way to go (lower monthly fees, too!).
One child avatar’s motivation
Tateru Nino’s been doing brief profiles/interviews of new and established avatars over at Second Life Insider. And the most recent subject is Neo Rebus:
Neo’s a Second Life kid (a child avatar) who’s been around forever and likes to build and script “and have fun and annoy stiffnecked adults. That’s what’s great about being a kid, I get to be a bit more free about saying what i wanna say and stuff to adults, where another adult couldn’t say it.”
Um, but Neo? Your typist is an adult, not a kid, and whatever persona you assume and whatever actions you take are chosen by an adult, so if you act intentionally annoying, I’ll treat you like an annoying adult, not like a kid. It is just this aspect of some child avatars that boggles my mind.
I don’t find it entertaining when adults act childish in my First Life, and I hardly want to deal with it in Second Life, either.
Now, it may be that I’m just stiffnecked and can’t tell the difference between childish and childlike. But you know, I don’t like annoying children, either, it’s just that I put up with them (or even indulge them) because they are children.
Faces of Faith video
Yesterday I was on a panel for a University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism fellowship program project. The fellows had researched and created reports on “Faces of Faith: God Sex Family” and decided to bring their reports into Second Life. As part of their weeklong exhibit, they organized this panel of SL religious figures (video). It was a real privilege to be on the panel.
The panel was actually done via conference call, which was streamed into the parcel audio. There were a couple of times when I just wanted to reach out to my keyboard and interact directly. There was a good turnout, in spite of some confusion over the time.
Bizarre SL client behavior
This morning, when using either the Voice First Look or the trunk SL client, I get this instead of the usual welcome screen with photo and stats:
ERROR
The requested URL could not be retrievedWhile trying to retrieve the URL: http://secondlife.com/app/login/
The following error was encountered:
• Access Denied.
Access control configuration prevents your request from being allowed at this time. Please contact your service provider if you feel this is incorrect.
Your cache administrator is webmaster [a mailto link to “webmaster”, not an email address]
Generated Sat, 28 Jul 2007 15:32:53 GMT by web14.lindenlab.com (squid/2.6.STABLE12)
Summer issue of 2Life
The Summer issue of 2Life magazine has been published.
Surveying the neighborhood 2
Karthos 128,112,47 – Standard setup, covenant “This island is being developed as Wooded/Oceanfront themed.” Large parcels, with very different themes, nice builds, good texturing. Volcano in the center of the sim. 4 avies present in sim.
Porto Cervo 130,152,43 – Commercial telehub, stores all empty. 80 agents, double prims, estate sun. Harbour build with restricted access. Most of sim empty. Terrain flat sand, with some water areas with surf.
Wyre 59,196,23 – And that is that for the SW and NW quadrants in the first ring of map screens. I’ll go ahead and start on the next ring of maps, starting with the NNW quadrant.
California 122,106,29 – An empty, fresh out of the box sim.
Coral Sea 101,98,24 – closest sim of a mini-continent, this void sim is all water.
Empress Augusta Bay 104,29,34 – Another water void sim, this one showing clear signs of being set up for sailing races.
Bismarck Sea 33,186,35 – Now this void sim is more interesting–it has an object bonus of 8.5, and there’s a small island on the NW corner with a very attractive maritime building. There’s one person in the sim.
Spoke the owner of the void ocean sims, Svar Beckersted. He says the NYC organizes races there. The center sim of the square of 9 is a full sim, Vella Lavella, which he says is closed to visitors.
Surveying the neighborhood
Wyre 59,194,22 – I am setting off to explore the environs of Wyre. Starting with the area visible to me within the map, I will begin at 12 and proceed clockwise, spiralling outward.
tenjin fukuoka japan 156,77,103 – Still too new to show any features on the map, Tenjin fukuoka japan (PG) has a water height of .1, agent limit 40, and uses an estate sun. There are large protected areas, clifflike terrain, a dirigible, and two large urban constructions. There are no plants. There is one other avatar here, somewhere.
InWorld Studios 47,108,30 – InWorld Studios (PG) Agent limit 90, fixed sun, telehub. No covenant. 1861 prims. Mostly bare, but green, corporate sim with teleporter to amphitheatre, machinima sound stage, beach, and cinema. Adjoining to the east is InWorld Park, which I cannot enter. There are no other avatars here.
InWorld Studios 47,108,30 – Most of the island seems to prohibit the scripts or communication required for SLurlBlogger and TwitterBox.
Germanius 1 129,129,23 – Germanius 1 (M) 100 agents, fixed sun. Telehub on map, but I didn’t land there. No covenant. A beach commercial sim, with nice wooden walkways above the water and Asian-Pacific Islander-styled rental booths. Also a couple of large (empty) contemporary office builds. No other avatars.
Harry Potter Island 126,147,46 – Harry Potter Island (M) SE of previous sim, touching corners. 100 agents, fixed sun, no covenant. 1144 prims. Telehub, not enforced. All parcels around edge restricted. One has a pirate ship in it. The center of the sim has an alpine/medieval style set of prefabs (I think I’ve seen these elsewhere) with a couple of shops but otherwise empty. One other avatar present.
Wyre 166,143,503 – Caovilla Venice (M) 40 agents, no covenant, 3185 prims on one parcel, with landing point. Some nice stonework piazzas and bridges amongst waterways, with a few boats. Center section has large glass building with rotating prims with RL shoe photos on them, banners in front that say “Rene Caovilla”. SLurlBlogger didn’t work.
Wyre 166,143,503 – I’ve now finished the right-hand quadrants, and will take a break from this exercise. Interesting to see that my neighbors are mostly empty.
Institute of Compassion and Peace
Lunata 82,151,28 – A very interesting, nearly whole-sim build, on the mainland, dedicated to the unity of world religions. There’s a cathedral, Hindu temple, synagogue, kiva, university, mosque, and Buddhist temple. It looks largely vacant, and it looks much better from a distance than up close, but all in all, pretty amazing.
Hurry, hurry, hurry!
Check out Long Now « welcome to blueair.tv for SLURLs for “four completely unique installations of Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings as remixed by Angrybeth Shortbread.” They’re only there through tonight (Sunday), as they are concurrent with the RL premiere installation. Totally wild. The Hooper location isn’t included in the in-world TPs, but make sure you go there&emdash;rotating cubes in space that you can sit on (especially good in mouselook with names turned off).